The Most Progressive Government when it comes to the Telecommunications, South Korea concluded Auction for Telecom Spectrum bands of 1800Mhz and 2600MHz which enables Data Transfer at unimaginable speeds of 100Mbps, which in India is still a dream even on our office Network where it theoretically gets connected at that speed but has much lower output.
SK Telecom won the C2 1.8GHz band and can offer natural LTE wide-band on 1.8GHz with 35MHz band in its secondary
spectrum. SKT has to return its existing 1.8GHz with 20MHz band, which it won for W995bn back in 2011 but the remaining W450bn usage fees will be waived. With its new 1.8GHz spectrum, SKT can also offer ‘broadband’ LTE as early as within this year end to 85 major cities by upgrading its existing equipment. SKT has previously used 850MHz for nationwide LTE coverage, with 1.8GHz – 20 MHz as supplementary bandwidth
Korea Telecom’s acquisition of D2 for W900bn was cheaper than what market had previously estimated. The key thing to note is that a natural wide-band is now capable on its primary network and the race will be whether KT can aggregate a natural wide-band with secondary 900MHz spectrum faster versus SKT which will try to aggregate its primary 20MHz of 800MHz spectrum with secondary wide-band 1.8MHz spectrum. KT can offer LTE wide-band with existing LTE phones. KT is allowed to start its broadband LTE service on metropolitan areas effective immediately, other major cities starting next March, and nation-wide coverage starting next July.
LG UPlus acquired 40MHz of 2.6GHz spectrum at min price of W479bn. It has no natural wide-band capability, nor does it have 1.8GHz spectrum but aggregation of its primary (20MHz of 800MHz) and secondary (20MHz of 2.1GHz) provides LTE-A wide-band capability.
The following chart Shows the 4G LTE-A Spectrum Allocation spread in South Korea
